


Gratuitous Hypothermia Prevention Fic

by betp



Category: In Other Lands
Genre: Amnesia, Bathing/Washing, Canon Compliant, Complaining a lot, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Spooning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:18:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: Elliot is cold, and everyone is just harassing him about his hair.





	Gratuitous Hypothermia Prevention Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Door](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Door/gifts).



> My first fic in the fandom. [This](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DaLM6t_VAAAYA2N?format=jpg&name=small) is an accurate representation of how I feel about this fic. 

Elliot does not remember how he came to be in this situation, so no matter how many times Luke demands an explanation, he ignores him. He vaguely remembers water so cold it felt like immeasurable pressure on every inch of his body; he also remembers hacking it like knives out of his lungs under a tree. Most vividly of all, he remembers the clear thought: _I am going to die_. He curled up under a tree and stayed there, that thought echoing around in his head while wind whipped around him and everything went dim. Some distant, comforting voice, then, and something gold and pearlescent. Someone lifting him out of sharp snow.

That's all he remembers, and he thinks now, less clearly, but still tangibly: _I am not dead_. If he was dead, he wouldn't be in this much pain. He wouldn't be consumed with this horrid, deep, bruising pain, all over his body. He wouldn't be experiencing this hellish pain and so cold that he can't even shiver. And above it all, his thoughts are slow and brackish like mud in stagnant pondwater. He is tired. He is so tired that the twisting fear from however he ended up in that water is buried under all the cold, and so tired that if he is dying, he's not particularly bothered by it.

Now, perplexed and dazzled with pain, he has been deposited onto a couch. He is being covered with several blankets, and as he struggles to keep his eyes open, he feels yet another settle heavily on top of him. He is fully blanketed from the top of his nose down to his feet—only someone is pulling the blankets back and is messing around with his feet. They have warm hands, but that is not enough to warrant having his naked feet messed around with. Yuck. He wants to kick them, but he can't move. There's a horrid twinge in his ankle. "I don't think he will lose any toes," he hears Serene say. Get off the feet, Serene. His entire body feels weighted down by iron. Cold, wet iron. He is rusted: he cannot _move_. Is he frozen? Is he truly frozen through? He remembers the water again and his chest hurts. "Elliot?" she says, squeezing his ankle softly. He ignores her. His head is throbbing. 

He thinks there is the orange flickering of a fire. Someone is saying his name urgently, which he ignores also. Go away. Come back. "This hair," someone is saying, bewildered. Who _is_ that? "It's a marvel. How does he _comb_ it?"

"I like it," says Luke's voice again. He sounds frustrated. Then, "There, a chest…"

"Well, it may literally be the death of him tonight," and then the hair judger is roughly toweling his head. Elliot realises he's very tender when this hurts him. Fingers press against his neck. The judge adds, "His heart beats so slowly…" Elliot is so cold. That is all that's there, in fact: coldness and fear and coldness and the immensely frustrating need for someone to touch him in a non-clinical fashion. He might cry, if he had the mental capacities for it. Instead, he summons all his strength to move one of his hands.

"What was he _doing_ out there?" Luke's angry voice is somewhere to his left, so that is where Elliot makes up his mind to reach. Elliot can hear his own breathing, loud and painful in his ears. He must not be dead. Over the sound, Luke is going on, "…off and hiding in places like a complete lunatic. I'm sure he's left a book out there that we'll find utterly ruined in spring…" Another blanket is dropped on top of Elliot.

"Elliot?" Serene tries again. Elliot gets the feeling this is not the first time she has tried to get his attention tonight. Tonight? Is it night? The last non-water thing he remembers is late morning. He was looking at a map. He is so cold. He wants to slip away into darkness. "Can you hear me?"

"His eyes are open," says the hair judge, who, it feels to Elliot, is now pulling his hair out of his actual head. No one is telling him to stop, however, so that's probably not what he's doing. Elliot thinks he can hear the hair _crunching_. Can hair break off after being frozen? It's probably for the best. "Gentle Elliot—oh. Stop, Luke."

Elliot's entire, frigid arm is now outside of his blanket cocoon, shaking and lost in the air. He's wearing a jumper, the sleeve of which is heavy and sodden and stiff with ice.

"Luke," Serene now contributes. "Come back."

" _What_?" Luke is irritable. That's heartening. "I'm trying to—oh," and Elliot feels Luke take his hand. In turn, with Herculean effort, Elliot begins to pull the hand in, under the blankets. "Elliot," says Luke. Everyone is just sitting around physically harassing Elliot and saying his name, apparently. He wants Luke to touch him and say his name again. He can't remember why he's here or what is happening. He can't remember what it's like to not be this despicably, solidly cold.

"There is blood in his hair. I shall go get some water," says Hair Judge, disappearing. Elliot is bereft: it was starting to feel good, the scrubbing with the towel.

Luke's free hand touches Elliot's face, then, pushes wet curls off his forehead, and Elliot realises two things: first, Luke's hand is absolutely _burning_ ; and second, if Elliot wasn't barely conscious, he'd probably be crying. "Hey," Luke says. Elliot opens his eyes and looks miserably at him. _Hey_ , he thinks dejectedly. Luke's hair is wet, too. He must have been out in the snow. "Elliot, what _happened_?" 

Elliot has doggedly tugged Luke's entire arm under the blankets and now, triumphant, he presses it against his belly. Sweet relief: he's barely started to feel the warmth seeping through his clothes, into his hands, when Luke says, "I get it," and pulls out of his grasp.

"No," mumbles Elliot into the blankets. "No, wai…" His voice is high and hoarse, practically a squeak.

"I know, shhh," Luke says. Then, "Serene, help me?"

Serene and Luke pull the blankets off of Elliot and haul him upright. He stares up at them, eyes now wide open. He thinks they are trying to communicate with him, but it keeps going garbled in his ears the way a long speech does when you're bored out of your skull. Only he wants to listen; he just wants to succumb to nothingness more. He keeps himself awake by cataloging their disheveled appearances. Serene's hair is messy, the way it gets when she's stressed; Luke's hair is clinging damply to his forehead, and his sleeve is damp where Elliot was holding it. They both look warm and alive; and Elliot knows they could beat him up if they wanted to; but they never have, and probably won't; they both look very frightened, like the possibility that Elliot might not recover has them unable to breathe; and all of this is only making him want to sleep _more_. Because there's a panic rattling around in Elliot's chest like he hasn't felt in a long time, and his blood feels sluggish. He blinks very slowly, and makes himself recall the distant warmth of Luke's arm against his body. He reaches weakly for his other arm, the dry arm, figuring he'll even Luke out and get that one wet too, but he runs out of energy and his arm flops uselessly down. Discouraged and shutting down, he eyes the floor. He is considering embracing his old enemy, gravity. It would be so much simpler. He could lie there and just be there and that would be where he was. He could whale drop there and nourish the land.

They don't let him. Instead, after speaking to him and making about as much sense as adults in a Peanuts cartoon, they briskly start peeling his clothes off. The jumper catches frigidly on his ears, and then it makes a heavy, wet sound when it hits the floor. Elliot pushes weakly at them for reasons. He does not know what those reasons are. _Watch out_ , his mind is telling him, but it won't tell him what to watch out for. He resists Serene's grip on the buttons on his shirt. When she grabs his wrist and pushes it roughly aside, her touch practically sizzles on his flesh. He submits to this clothing removal treatment ultimately because there's nothing on him either of them has never seen before, because he feels somewhat lighter once freed from his sweater prison, and because even at peak performance, if Serene and Luke wanted his shirt off, he wouldn't be able to fight back. He sways limply as they peel his t-shirt off. Mostly he is unhappy with his situation in general. His hair is dripping all over, this is humiliating, he is still trying to outrun a panic attack, and he has never been this cold. He glares about, sitting there half dressed while they scrub him with towels until patches of his entire, freezing body are prickling and burning—though he's still mostly numb, no sensation but a deep cold ripped right through him. He shuts his eyes so he doesn't have to watch Luke go methodically at his jeans. Serene takes the towel to his head again, and she's close enough and warming him enough that he starts to comprehend her words: "...is ice all in it," she's saying, "do you see?" _Yes, yes, my hair is a hazard_ , Elliot thinks broodingly as he feels chunks of ice patter down his shoulders.

Finally Luke and Serene stop. Elliot slowly, grudgingly opens his eyes, and they both bend down and peer into his face. Elliot has discovered that he is now shuddering, teeth chattering. "Okay?" Luke says. What a stellar communicator. Elliot reaches for him again, feeling childish, but before he can make any headway they seize him and drag him off the couch. He yelps with pain when he steps with his right foot, and they immediately take more of his weight. He blinks, and is abruptly tossed, blankets and all, onto a bed.

"…basic first aid," Elliot realises Serene is saying, putting his feet up and packing him down with still more blankets. "Those clothes will only make him colder. It..."

Elliot drifts for a second, and then the voice of the hair judge breaks through the fog: "He is not as skinny as he looks." Is that Golden? Elliot can't see that far, for some reason. His father wore glasses. He hopes he never has to wear glasses. "Everyone says it's unseemly for a man to be muscular, but I think it looks nice on him," Golden goes on.

"He is lean," Serene decides, affectionately. "Like a deer." Elliot is satisfied to be a deer.

Golden says, "Maybe if he had more weight on him he wouldn't be so cold."

"I found him soaked and covered in ice," Luke says, climbing into the bed. "He was at death's door and anyone would have been." Not mermaids, Elliot thinks. Not mermaids! Mermaids from the far north! Apparently they have thick layers of blubber, like a seal. Elliot doesn't remember how he knows that, but he thinks he's never seen one like that, and it's nice to have goals. His mind swims a little like he's dropped slowly into the lake where he's met a mermaid before. Then it's lurched into stability when Luke rolls Elliot onto his side. He's sliding up behind him. "Do you hear me?" he directs at Elliot, giving him a small shake. "Death's door."

Man, what a grouch. "M'fine," Elliot provides.

"At last he speaks," says Serene softly, "only to lie to us."

Elliot was going to answer, at the least to say he's fine again, but Luke puts an arm around him and presses against him: abandon thought, ye who enter here. His shirt is gone. Elliot instinctively stiffens and pulls away, because Luke's skin is like fire; but just as quickly, he falls back against him, clinging to Luke's arm. " _Ah_! You're _freezing_ ," Luke hisses, but he doesn't move. If anything, as he grows accustomed to Elliot's temperature, he curves tighter around him, weighting Elliot down as the rigors really start to take hold. 

Elliot realises he is being spooned currently. As it happens, being spooned is one of his favorite activities. It didn't used to be, but Luke came into the picture and reversed just about everything Elliot thought he liked. Luke also brings some unique attributes to bed in general—two, to be specific—and sometimes they make Elliot's mind completely blank with desire. Other times, like now, they are warm and comforting. Elliot is referring specifically to the fact that Luke has wings. Thrilling! Warm ones, wings that are both functional and aesthetic. He shudders in a bed with a half-harpy, and sighs. He lets Luke pet him and kiss his face until he goes to sleep—not a tomb of delirium and terror like before, but a true and silent sleep. The last thing he hears is Serene: "Golden, you are correct about his hair. There are feathers everywhere. We should do something about it."

And the last thing he feels is Luke's voice as he talks back to her.

 

Elliot wakes himself up by shivering violently, teeth rattling comically. He's alone in the bed, but Serene melts out of the darkness of the room and shushes him, rubbing his shoulder, tucking the blankets closer around his neck. "S-S-Serene," he whispers.

"Yes," she says, and then she kisses the top of his head. He realises no one cut his hair off: his head has been bandaged, and the hair has dried flat against the side of his head.

"Do-d-do—are, are th-there an-n-nymore b-blank-kets-s—" It takes way too long to get such a pathetic sentence out. 

"No," she says, "I'm sorry." Then she sits on the bed beside him. She unwinds a scarf from around her neck and arranges it on the edge of his jaw and cheek that are poking out of the blankets. "Luke will be back," she tells him, scratching her fingers into his hair. "He went to get food."

Useless stupid Luke. Awful monster Luke. Dumb hungry Luke. Serene, an angel, stands. She disappears from Elliot's view. Then she returns and places a hot rice pack on his feet. The relief rolls up his feet, ankles. Momentarily he begins to relax, and realises he's aching partly because he's twisting himself up tight, clenching against the cold. Elliot will sell his soul for her, tomorrow. Note to self. Stupid trash Luke.

"Is that better?" Serene asks him, returning to stroke his head some more. He nods, rubbing his cheek against the pillow. Shudders are hitting him in waves, so hard he thinks he can feel his bones all clacking together. Serene begins ruffling gently through his hair, plucking feathers out of it. This is a common side effect of sharing a bed with Luke: get him scared and his wings might start shedding feathers everywhere. The familiarity is soothing to the point of making Elliot's nose sting a little bit, and the knowledge that Elliot's predicament is stressing Luke out so much is somewhat heartening. _Yes. Care about me._ He recalls the harpies in the forest affectionately putting feathers in his hair, and Luke irritably picking them all out. _Put the feathers back, Serene._ "There," Serene says, satisfied. "You are safe. And very, very dear to me. And you will be punished for frightening us like this."

That's fair. He coughs. It is dry and loud and alerts him to the fact that while he was sleeping, someone must have scrubbed out the inside of his throat with a bottle brush. Only that could explain this pain. It also catches on his throat and sends him into a coughing fit that lasts until Serene begins petting his hair again.

"Your hair looks nice," Serene lies to him, attempting to flatten it with her hand even as she says this.

"Your f-f-face," Elliot rasps, "looks—n-n-n—"

"I know," says Serene benevolently.

Elliot is so cold, so very cold. Luke, the treacherous snake who abandons people, reappears, wingless and wearing his shirt again, laden with a mug and an apple. Very, very cold. Luke's hair has dried in a light wave, and he looks pink and vital compared to the stone white of Elliot's hands. This is disconcerting, because usually Elliot is the pink one, and Serene unearthly pale. Luke looks warm and Elliot watches him the way a starving man watches somebody carry a roast chicken, begging him mentally to come back to bed. However Elliot hates the mug and apple for being here. They are the reason Elliot was robbed of warmth and rest, and furthermore, apple skin always hurts his gums. He certainly hopes that's Luke's apple and is not intended for Elliot. "The apple is for me," Luke tells Elliot, pulling back the blankets and sliding leisurely underneath them. Oh, good. Hurry up. "Can you sit up for me and drink this?"

Elliot ignores him: as soon as Luke is physically in the bed, Elliot scrambles half on top of him, clinging to him like a shaking, angry octopus. The rice pack falls to one side, and Serene steps close to rearrange it. The warmth is perfect, exactly what Elliot needed; and if he could only get Luke to never get up again, he would be set.

"I see," Luke says, shifting. Then, to Serene: "No wonder he was looking at me like that."

"See his hair," Serene contributes, amused. "Look what you did to it."

"I—hm." Luke prods at Elliot's head. He finds another feather. "I still like it," he concludes valiantly, tugging the blankets up and over them both.

Elliot watches this happen with a sullen sort of contentment, like a kid being told his time-out is over. Elliot pushes his icy fingers under Luke's shirt and makes him make a noise that reminds Elliot of a puppy getting its tail stepped on. Then he tucks his cold face against Luke's chest and goes back to sleep.

 

When Elliot wakes a second time, he is still tucked against Luke's side, one arm tossed across him, but now he is wearing a hat and mittens. He squirms a little and catalogues all the articles of clothing he is now wearing: (1) hat, (2) mittens, (3) shorts, (4) socks, and (5) he thinks someone tied up his right ankle? And that's it. This is a rotten experience, and he rubs his wrist against the edge of the mattress, peeling a mitten off the way you scrape dog mess off your shoe on a sidewalk curb. Then he rolls back from Luke a little and pulls the second mitten off. The hat can stay.

Serene is up behind him, he realises, on top of the blankets, rendering him sandwiched between the two of them, and wearing a hat. This is his ideal situation, he decides. If he could be anywhere, he would be behatted and nestled between Luke and Serene like a stupid little hot dog. And he is blissfully warm. He could stand to be warmer: there's a shard of cold still lodged in the centre of all his body, down his limbs and through his raw throat. And he wishes he was wearing pajamas. But he squirms pleasantly in all his layers of fabric. Serene and Luke are practicing their French, the latest language Elliot has them learning, even though it's unlikely they'll encounter anyone who speaks French aside from Elliot. Tangling his cold, unmittened fingers with Luke's, Elliot says hoarsely, "Your pronunciation is _terrible_."

"Hi," Luke answers.

"Hi. _Terrible_."

"Yeah."

"Not yours, Serene," Elliot adds, twisting to look over his shoulder. He is very sleepy. She's let her hair down and reclaimed her scarf. Elliot thinks she could blend in in England, if she wore earmuffs and could climb the wall. It's very rainy in England. "Yours is charming." It's not a compliment: just a factual judgment. The elvish accent is interesting, and sounds even more interesting trying to wrap around confused French. Luke's more human accent, like an imperious combination of accents, stumbles a little bit in his unfamiliarity, and Elliot wants to hear it just as much as he wants to correct it.

"Mais oui," she says with confidence. Then she puts a hand on his shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

Shredded. "Swell."

"Your head?"

Spinning. "Fabulous. Yippee."

Luke asks, "Do you remember what happened?"

Breaking ice. A sharp knock to the side of his head. Black water. He thinks someone scooped him up out of the snow. He thinks he was carried. Well, that won't do. "No," Elliot says. Serene pats his shoulder and it stings.

Luke tells Elliot in adorable, halting French that Elliot is bad and also not good as well, which Elliot finds _delightful_. His vocabulary isn't particularly advanced yet. But he picked up southern Trollish pretty quickly, and their verbs are a nightmare. "That is perfect," Elliot tells him, feeling a little lightheaded. "Please continue." The terrible French entertained Elliot enough to let Luke drag him up and stick a shirt on him and kiss him a little. They make him drink some hot cocoa, eat a piece of bread, and confirm he knows who he is and how many fingers Golden is holding up ("That's right," Luke affirms. Elliot says, "Good. I guessed correctly. Tricked you. I am illiterate and can't count"). Then he falls back asleep, propped up between Luke and Serene, surrounded by trusted, soothing voices speaking truly horrendous French.

 

When he wakes up a third time, he is hatless. He is very cold, but not in the torturous, gutting way of before. He is cold the way you are when it is beginning to rain and you've forgotten your cloak. He realises now that he doesn't know where his cloak is. He sits up and looks around, first for the hat. Nowhere to be seen, but there are a few feathers around the pillows. He picks one up and sticks it in his hair. Now around the room. It is dark, a few small candles lit, and a fire in the fireplace. His clothes are hung over the screen in front of it. Golden-Hair-Scented-Like-Summer is in repose on the couch, peacefully sewing something blue that is spread across his lap. He is wearing a fur-collared cloak, and Elliot thinks he is probably scented like winter. Wind is blowing noisily outside, precipitation hitting the windows; but inside is quiet, safe, warm. The room is filled with the crackle of the fire and Golden absently humming a song Elliot taught him. It is Blitzkrieg Bop, and he is singing it like a lullaby.

Luke and Serene aren't in the room, so, shivering, Elliot wraps the thickest blanket around himself like a cape and limps around for a few minutes, Golden supervising and providing commentary on his hair. "Luke won't let me and Serene touch your hair," he announces, watching Elliot pace with his blanket in front of the fire.

"He likes it," Elliot explains. His voice is rough, sore, throat swollen—but he can speak clearly at last. His thoughts are aligning more or less. The first hour or two being back inside is a little wavy in his mind, like something was wrong with the camera; and before, outside, is little more than a whirl of concepts and sensations. He can get away with nothing more than a flicker of fear if he skips past thinking about it in depth; but if he focuses on details, there he is, back in that river. And the urge to return to the blanket chrysalis is almost overwhelming.

"He says it's darker than it used to be." It takes Elliot a second to realise Golden is still talking about his stupid hair. Golden repositions the thing he is sewing in his lap. "He says it's even redder now."

"I've made peace with it," says Elliot, shrugging, but this causes the blanket to fall off one shoulder. He trembles and clutches the blanket tighter around his throat. He catches a glimpse of himself in a dusty, tarnished mirror near the fireplace and sees that he is quite bluish-pale with bright, ruddy spots on his cheeks, his nose, and his ears. His hair is matted thickly to his skull, sticking up in places in random, angry sprigs. It's gritty with sediment, probably from falling onto the ground outdoors for however long he was out there. Elliot's head feels naked, especially with his hair lacking its typical fluff and volume, and he wants to know where his hat went. Ironically enough, he is too cold to ask. He coughs and turns away.

He is just about to return to his blanket cave when Serene and Luke reappear in the doorway to the kitchen area. "You're up!" says Serene with relief.

"I am sleepwalking," Elliot tells them, easing all his weight off his right ankle. "It's the Ambien."

Luke screws up his face, puzzled. Then he and Serene tell him to get in a bath.

 

The tub is large and made of wax-coated wood. He clumsily manoeuvers himself into it and tremors his way beneath the surface of the warm water, just above room temperature.

Shortly Luke comes in bearing buckets of steaming water, which he adds in increments to get it hotter as Elliot is in it. He and Serene have planned this well. Elliot soaks and washes his hair and describes the Spice Girls to Luke, who sits and plucks feathers out of the bathwater and listens with growing consternation. "So they are a group of minstrels," he says, rubbing a soapy cloth between Elliot's shoulder blades, "named after condiments…" Elliot lets this go. "And then they were in an electrical play."

"Movie," Elliot corrects.

"Sorry. A _moving_ play."

Sure, why not.

Luke begins to empty the second bucket into the tub, and it burns all of Elliot's extremities. Elliot shudders happily. "What was it about? The moving play?"

"You know what?" Elliot twists around and clings to the edge of the tub, looking up at Luke, who is lit a warm orange from the candles set about the room. " _No one knows_."

It's not that Spice World is inherently sexy, it's that Luke and his perplexity are. Elliot reaches for him, twists one warm, dripping hand in Luke's shirt, and pulls him close. He can't do it rough and undeniable like he usually can, but Luke follows just as easily as if he had.

Elliot loves him, has loved him wildly forever now, like all the seasons and all the stories he's ever seen. But he's never said it—slow, he's been slow with Luke, because it seems to have brought him to a good place and he refuses to repeat mistakes—and now isn't a good time. Not when he's just narrowly escaped death, as he's been reminded several times by each of the people in this building. Luke would find a way to see doubt in that timing. He wants to get to this point at the same time Luke does, hand in hand. So not yet. No, instead Elliot will sex him in a bathtub, a place he has yet to sex anyone, tragically, and he will do it in a way that will stick in Luke's mind. Someday, should Elliot get the chance to say it, Luke will remember this bathtub experience and think, _Of course_.

Elliot has been carefully leaving _of course_ breadcrumbs throughout their relationship. This is a long con, minus the con. Just long. "You're not still cold?" Luke says after a few scorching, dragging kisses. Stupid. Moron.

"Chilly," Elliot concedes, "but I'm in a bath."

"You scared the wits out of me," Luke tells him. He's scowling a little. "You know that?" Elliot wants to apologize, but he thinks he got the shorter end of the stick, here. 

"Oh," Elliot says, ruefully tracing the path of a water droplet he's left on Luke's chest. "But you don't have a lot of those, you must be totally depleted..." 

"Elliot," Luke urges, and he looks so bereft that Elliot feels genuinely contrite.

"Sorry," Elliot says softly. 

Luke stresses, "You were _blue_." 

"I'll try to be a different color next time." Luke narrows his eyes, and Elliot sighs. "I'm _sorry_. I didn't fall in a river _at_ you. And look:" Inanely, Elliot splashes the water a little. "Bath. See? All better now. You're my _hero_ , Sunborn." You _did_ it.

Luke shakes his head, flushing, and Elliot feels very smug about the grudging half-smile tugging at the corner of Luke's mouth. Luke leans over and looks at the bath: "Is it warm enough?"

Elliot is very intelligent and he knows that even if you could determine water temperature by looking at it, it is impossible to look at clear water when there is a person in it. He smirks. "Come in and find out," Elliot suggests suggestively. Then, in case Luke doesn't get the suggestion, he says, "Let's do it."

"Really? Right after you nearly died?" Oh for god's sake. Before Elliot can accompany a third apology with a washcloth to Luke's face, Luke pushes Elliot's hair off his forehead, and locates yet another feather. Surely there must be some kind of regular exercise Luke could perform on himself to prevent this much wayward feathers. Elliot makes up his mind to look this up. Still, Elliot loves it when he does that, the grooming. When anybody does it, but especially Luke. He enjoys being lovingly groomed. If he could purr, he would be purring.

"That is the best time to do it," Elliot explains, now unlacing Luke's shirt. "You get to affirm that I am alive and safe and _very_ interested in doing it with you…" Now he goes for Luke's belt, because there is only so much a guy can do one-handed from inside a giant tub. It was only laced halfheartedly to begin with, so he sort of yanks ineptly at it. "And I get to demonstrate my _frantic_ gratitude," he goes on, "for the rescue and subsequent pampering."

Luke is flushing, smirking. It's been over a year, so you'd think he would have been accustomed by now to Elliot chatting him up. "You _could_ just _say_ it."

"Actions speak louder than words, _loser_." _Loser_ has always been affectionate, and it has never been delivered with any less scathing a tone than would be expected the very first time. Every time Elliot insults Luke, it's like the first time. Same with the sex. That part's a secret.

"Your action could be to stop insulting me," says Luke.

"It could," agrees Elliot, "but I am trying to seduce you and historically you have responded well to insults."

"Yes," says Luke, and then he thrills Elliot by finally removing the shirt and gamely obliging Elliot's request. "I wasn't _supposed_ to turn out like this, you know," he tells Elliot as he braces his hands on either side of the tub and descends into the bath, sending water seeping over the edges of the tub and probably ruining the clothes he's left spread across the floor. "I wasn't _supposed_ to be pleased to be insulted."

Oh, well, Elliot thinks, putting his hands on Luke's ribs. Elliot doesn't concern himself with alternate realities. (False: he is very concerned by alternate realities.) Luke has a wide scar on his side, just there, and Elliot recalls that when he received it, Elliot blew a gasket. As they get closer, he rubs this with the pad of his thumb, as if he could urge it back into Luke's skin. He thinks his and Luke's bodies fit well together, almost by design. He thinks he always saw that, just objectively, only for a few years he took that information and filed it quickly under _both top secret and irrelevant_ , a mental folder that he now realises probably shouldn't exist. "And yet," Elliot says, smiling brilliantly up at Luke in a way he hopes is beautiful and loving and attractive, and not disconcerting.

Grinning back down at him, Luke agrees, "And yet," and Elliot successfully throws down another breadcrumb.

"Oh," Luke says now, and "oh," Luke says months later when Elliot finally sends him after all the crumbs. But that is months from now. For now, Elliot digs blunt fingernails into Luke's skin, and Luke gets his wings all wet, and Elliot, toes curling, doesn't bother sparing a thought for what Serene and Golden can hear from wherever they are.

Eventually, Elliot's ankle heals and he has an absolutely dreadful cold for two weeks. He sits outside, blowing his nose and watching the snow begin to melt, and Golden comes out and offers to do his hair for him. Something. Anything. "No," Serene says. "Luke likes it." 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i am _so sorry_ for barging uninvited into this fandom
> 
> Some notes:
> 
>   * He was out there in the storm by a river because he saw one of these far north mermaids trapped in a too-small hole in the ice. He broke the ice so she could escape, at which point the ice was broken, so he fell in and bonked his head. The mermaid pushed him back on land and watched him, but there's only so much a water-dweller can do.
>   * Luke found him. It was traumatic. He honestly thought the guy was dead for a second.
>   * They are in a cabin somewhere for reasons. Look, I'm not responsible for explaining the setting. Do I look like a writer to you?
>   * Serene and Golden can't hear anything. They are playing Elliot's tape deck in the kitchen.
>   * Couches exist.
>   * I feel like eventually Elliot lets Golden tie a cord around his head. You know? Like a crown? It'll look super magical and woodsy and elven. I also have curly red hair and I'm here to tell you that it'll batten down the hatches, so to speak.
>   * He will go over the wall to a thrift store and find a tape of Spice Girls songs for them all someday.
>   * I have a lot of feelings.
> 



End file.
